Italo Svevo's early novel Senilita (1898) remained unknown for many years until James Joyce encountered the novelist in Trieste and came to admire Senilita as a preeminent modern Italian novel. Joyce helped to launch Svevo's career, and years later Svevo achieved great fame with his masterpiece, Confessions of Zeno. In Senilita, Svevo tells the story of the amorous entanglement of Emilio, a failed writer already old at thirty-five, and Angiolina, a seductively beautiful but promiscuous young woman. A study in jealousy and self-torment, the novel traces the intoxicating effect of a narcissistic and amoral woman on an indecisive daydreamer who vacillates between guilt and moral smugness. The novel is suffused with a tragic sense of existence, and the unbreachable distance between one consciousness and another. Svevo's unmistakably modern voice subtly captures rapid shifts in mood and intention, exploiting irony, indirection, and multiple points of view to reveal Emilio's increasing anguish as he comes to recognize the dissonance between himself and his world.

伊塔洛·斯韋沃 (ltalo Svevo, 1861－1928), 原名埃托雷·施米茨（ Ettore Schmitz）， 意大利商人兼小說傢，開意大利心理小說的先河，其代錶作品包括長篇小說《澤諾的意識》《一生》《當你老去》。 他大器晚成，60歲後纔寫齣成名之作《澤諾的意識》，這本書令其躋身國際重要作傢之列，諾貝爾文學奬得主濛塔萊推崇他為普魯斯特第二；他與卡夫卡和普魯斯特並駕齊驅， 是20世紀最齣色的小說傢之一。

譯者

張智中（1966- ），天津師範大學外國語學院英語翻譯教師。2005年畢業於南開大學外國語學院，獲典籍英譯方嚮博士學位。2007年起於河南大學做博士後研究，主要研究方嚮是詩歌翻譯美學。齣版編、譯、著24部，發錶學術論文近50篇，譯詩近2000首，發錶詩歌30餘首，並曾獲多種奬項。被我國著名翻譯傢許淵衝先生贊為"中國新一代翻譯者當中漢英雙語能力皆非常齣色的年輕一代翻譯者。"